Saturday, May 17, 2014

Way back when I started this blog, one of the first
articles I thought about writing was on the first ten coin-op video games to be
released. Unfortunately, back then, I didn’t have enough information to write a
definitive article, since the sources I had at the time were too late. Play Meter didn’t publish its first
issue until December of 1974 and RePlay didn’t
start until October, 1975. Cash Box and
Vending Times were covering the
coin-op industry in 1972 and 1973, but I didn’t have access to those issues. My
library has a nice long run of Vending Times but it doesn’t start until
February of 1974 and I didn’t have any access to Cash Box at all.

Since then, things have gotten better. I haven’t been
able to look at the late 1972 and 1973 issues of Vending Times but I know someone who used to be an editor there and
he was kind enough to make a trip to their New York offices and look through the
issues for me. Then I found another library that had a run of Cash Box starting in July, 1973. The bad
news was that it was 500 miles away in El Paso. On the other hand, El Paso was
one of few Texas cities I hadn’t been to yet so I planned one of my annual road
trips around El Paso and included a stop at UTEP to peruse their issues. I was
also able to purchase a number of the earlier issues from E-Bay. More recently,
I’ve been buying early issues of Marketplace,
an industry newsletter published by Bill Gersh (who also published Cash Box (NOTE that Billboard had basically stopped covering the coin-op amusement
industry – other than jukeboxes – by 1972).

Unfortunately (again), despite all the new info, I still
don’t have the info I need to write a definitive article on the first ten
coin-op video games. The sources that covered the coin-op industry in 1972 and
1973 just didn’t report video game releases nearly as frequently as they did in
subsequent years, so I still don’t have good dates for many of the games.

Nonetheless, here is my stab at listing the first ten
coin-op video games, based on the information I currently have.

Which was first, Computer Space or Galaxy Game? This is probably the most
controversial point in this article. For many years, almost every history of
video games listed Computer Space as
the world’s first coin-op video game. Contrary to what some think, Computer Space was not unknown to early
video game historians. A number of articles and books touching on video game
history were published in the early 1980s and almost all of them mention Computer Space.Galaxy Game was much less known (one
day I may do an article specifically on the historiography of video games and
cover this in more detail). Now that Bill Pitts’ game is more widely known, a
kind of consensus seems to have formed that it, not Computer Space, was actually the true “first” coin-op video game.
This is likely based on the fact that Computer
Space was “released” in November, 1971 while Galaxy Game was “released” the month before and thus was the "first" coin-op video game.
This is not really accurate, however. Computer
Space was supposedly "released" in November. But what does “released” mean? For me, “released” means when the
manufacturer started shipping the game to distributors (or at least when they
were ready to ship it), and I'm assuming that's what it means here.
When comparing Computer Space and Galaxy Game, I think release dates are really a moot point. Galaxy Game was a
one-of-a-kind game and wasn’t built by a manufacturer and thus never shipped to
any distributors and was never really "released" at all. According to available sources, it was placed on location at
the student union in Stanford in September, 1971, so that was when the general
public first (at least those at Stanford) got to see it. This was also
basically when the game was “field tested”. According to Goldberg and Vendel, Computer Space was first placed on
location in August, 1971 at The Dutch
Goose so in terms of when the public could actually drop a coin into an
arcade video game, Computer Space appears
to have been first and since Galaxy Game
wasn’t really a released product, I think that this is the best criteria we
can use to determine priority. (Of course, we could also ask which one started
development first. Normally, this kind of info is rare for coin-op video games,
but in this case the info available indicates that Computer Space was started long before Galaxy Game so by this criteria, Computer
Space is still #1)

3.Star Trek (For-Play
Manufacturers) – Released September, 1972??

This one is really interesting. It was a clone of Computer Space, thus making it not only possibly the third coin-op
video game ever made but the first bootleg game (Galaxy Game wasn’t a bootleg of Computer Space, though both were versions of the mainframe
original). It was supposedly released in September of 1972 (or at least that what
I have in my notes). I am not sure, however, exactly where I got that date and
haven’t been able to track down its source since then. I have a vague memory
that it came from one of Bill Kurtz’s books on arcade video games but that is
only a vague memory and Kurtz isn’t the most reliable source. The game’s flyer
on The Arcade Flyer Archive has a date stamped on it of “Sep 19 1972” but that
doesn’t prove that it had been released by then (for one thing, flyers often
came out a month or so before a game shipped and for another, someone could
have stamped that date on there later).
OTOH, the company was incorporated on July 20, 1972 and according to RePlay/Play Meter it was formed specifically
to get into the video game business.

4.Pong (Atari) – Released November,
1972

Not much to say about this one. The date comes from the well-known internal
document that has been circulated about the web. I am not actually sure if the
dates on said documents are “release” dates or not, but they seem to be (they
could be the date the game went into production, but games generally went into
production the same month they started shipping).

5. Computer Space Ball ??? (Nutting Associates) - Released early 1973? The date on this one is very uncertain and I have found few solid references. The June 16, 1973 issue of Cash Box mentioned that the game was "still going great guns", indicating that it had probably been out for at least a few months. A more intriguing mention came in an interview with Vic Leslie (chairman of England's Cherry group) in the August, 1976 issue of Play Meter. Discussing how he got into video games, Leslie noted:

"At the ATE in 1973, the London Exhibition, Rui [Lopes - Nutting VP] and I bumped into each other again. Actually, he approached me and said that he had a different type of game: would I be interested in marketing it in England?...I believe he shipped the machine, which was called Nutting Computer Space Ball but was Rui's version of Pong. Pong had just been invented a month or two prior to that and hadn't come to England at all at that time."

The ATE was usually (and, AFAIK, always) held in January - which fits in with Leslie's claim that Pong had been invented "a month or two prior to that". It is unclear if Computer Space Ball had already been released in the US at the time but, if so, it would have surely been the first Pong clone.6.Paddle Battle (Allied
Leisure Industries) – Released March, 1973

The date here is taken from Allied’s annual report. It is actually the date the
game went into production but as I mentioned above, this is generally the same
months as the release date. While it appears that at least two other games were
released in March, 1973, I’m guessing that Allied Leisure was the first of them.
Paddle Battle was probably the
best-selling of all the early Pong games
(yes, including the original) – though that is not certain. If so, its early
release date was likely one big reason (see my Allied Leisure history for more
info).

7.Rally (For-Play
Manufacturers) – Released March, 1973?

For-Play strikes again – and with another clone. Not sure exactly when it was
released but the release was announced in the March 17, 1973 issue of Cash Box. Note that For-Play also released
a one-player version of the game in June. Note too that For-Play’s games were
also sold and distributed via a company called ACA.

8.Volly (Ramtek) – Released late
March, 1973?

Like Allied Leisure, Ramtek had a leg up on the competition. In this case it
was because one of the company execs had a financial interest in Andy Capp’s Tavern and got an early peak
at Pong (supposedly the day after it
went on test). Not sure of the exact date it was released but in an interview
in the June/July, 1975 issue of Play
Meter, Nolan Bushnell claimed it came out in “late March”.

9.Winner (Bally/Midway)
– Released April, 1973?

Unlike most Pong clones, Midway’s
version was actually legit. In March, 1973 they actually licensed the game from
Atari (according to some, it was one of three companies to do so) and released
their version a short time later. There may have been other games released in
April, but I haven’t been able to find any firm dates.

Not sure of the release dates on these. TV
Ping Pong was shown to distributors on March 30, 1973 but I’m not sure when
it was released. My notes say that the release of TV
Tennis was announced in the April, 1973 issue of Vending Times, but it wasn’t announced in Cash Box until the October 27, 1973 issue so the earlier date may have been referring to TV Ping Pong.

11.????Paddle Ball (Williams) – Released May,
1973?

Once again, I’m not sure of the exact date, but the game’s release was
announced in the May, 1973 issue of Vending
Times. It was also mentioned in the April 14, 1973 issue of Cash Box (though it didn’t say it was
released)

The “????” before the #10 and #11 games indicates how
sketchy the information I have on games released after March, 1973 is (and really,
even the earlier dates aren’t as nailed down as I’d like). It’s quite possible
that some other company released a game before some of the games on this list. Here
are some candidates (in order by manufacturer)

Allied Leisure – Tennis
Tourney (July, 1973). This was Allied’s four-player version of Pong and its second video game.

Amutronics – TV Ping
Pong. This one appeared in the July 7, 1973 Cash Box catalog issue, meaning that it had been released sometime
in the past year. It may have been released prior to some of the games on the
list above.

Arizona Automation – Champion
Ping Pong. TAFA lists this as a 1973 game. Arizona Automation planned to
show it at the November MOA show that year, but I don’t know if they did.
Arizona Automation became Mirco Games shortly thereafter.

Atari – Pong-in-a-Barrel??
Only about 20 units of this one were produced and I’m not sure exactly when
(note, this game is not to be confused with Barrel Pong) as the game. Their next “officially” released game
after Pong was Space Race in July, 1973.

BAC Electronics – Tele-Soccer.
Shown at the 1973 MOA show (November 9-11). According to Ralph Baer they
had another game called Tennis but I
have found no other reference to it.

Nutting Associates – What was Nutting’s next game after Computer Space? Probably the 2-player
version of the game, which was mentioned in the June 6, 1973 issue if Cash Box. If you don’t consider that a
separate game, their next game was probably Computer Space Ball, which was mentioned in the same issue. TAFA
lists this game as a 1972 release, but that is almost certainly wrong. Note
that in Kent’s Ultimate History Steve
Bristow is quoted as saying that Nolan Bushnell got a look at Missile Radar “before he started”
Atari, but this also seems to be clearly wrong.

PMC Electronics – TV
Table Tennis. This one also appeared in the July 7, 1973 Cash Box catalog issue (indicating it
was released at some point during the preceding year).

Sega – Pong Tron.
Release dates for early Japanese games are even harder to come by than U.S.
games (at least for a non-Japanese researcher). Arcade-History.com lists this
one as a July, 1973 release.

Taito – Elepong. This
was Taito’s first video game but I have no release date info on it.

U.S. Billiards – TV
Tennis. The first reference I found to this one was a flyer in the
November, 1973 issue of Vending Times.
Normally, I wouldn’t have included it but there is a slim possibility that it
came out much earlier.

UBI (United Billiards, Inc.) – TV Table Tennis. Ditto this one. It was mentioned in the October
16, 1973 issue of Cash Box.

Volly Industries – Volly was (supposedly) an offshoot of
Ramtek that released Ramtek games in Canada (usually under a different name).
TAFA lists Hockey, Scoring, and Tennis as 1973 releases, as does the
website on the company’s history (http://www.ccjvq.com/slydc/topic/volly/volly.htm)

This may be a bit
dry for some of you, with its emphasis on the legal issues, but if there is
interest, I could also do a post on Mesquite.

Any gamer who grew up in the “golden
age” of the 1980s likely remembers the furor over video games, and especially
video game arcades that flared up mid-decade. The “controversy” (which turned
out to be something of a tempest-in-a-teapot) spilled over into the national
media with stories appearing on the evening news, the Phil Donahue show and
others. A number of localities placed restrictions of the games or (rarely) banned
them outright. Of these,
the two most infamous were Marshfield, Massachusetts and Mesquite, Texas. The
cases were tracked avidly by the video game industry and both were appealed all
the way to the Supreme Court.

Marshfield,
MA

In
1981, Marshfield, Massachusetts was a sleepy seaside resort town of about
11,000 people on the state's South Shore southeast of Boston. During the
summer, people would flock to the town to lounge on the beach, fish, or grab a
meal at the Green Harbor Lobster Pound. Like almost every other town in the
1980s, Marshfield also had video games – about 60 to 70 of them[1]. Construction
workers would stop by Sea Side Grocery in the mornings for coffee and a game. Out
of town businessmen would spend their lunch hour zapping aliens at the
Marshfield Sports Center. Kids would play a round of Pac-Man after an evening of skating or roller hockey at the
Marshfield Family Skateland, which had started back in 1952 as the Marshfield
Roll-a-Rink. Not everyone in Marshfield found the games so amusing, however. As
the permanent population swelled, concern about video games mounted. The city's
rise to infamy began in November of 1981 when the town's counsel informed the
Board of Selectmen that the commercial use of coin-op amusement devices was a
violation of an existing town zoning bylaw that had been enacted in 1972. In
response, the city stopped issuing new licenses for the devices until a new ordinance
could be written. At a town meeting on June 15, 1982, the Board of Selectmen
proposed a new law that would allow the "accessory use" of up to 4
coin-op machines in eating and drinking establishments and established an
annual licensing fee of $100 per machine. The law, however, did not sit well
with some – including Thomas R. Jackson, a former narcotics officer and head of
the town's vandalism committee. Jackson believed that "the proliferation
of these games in town has created a honky-tonk atmosphere" and that for
some the games were the first step on the road to compulsive gambling[2].
If that weren't enough, Jackson also claimed that people in the video game business
"are all hoods", that the leading proponent of easing the
restrictions had been arrested in a recent drug raid, that 89% of games were
violent and "designed to be addictive", and that there had been 9
documented deaths due to violence in arcades in 1982[3]. Rather
than easing restrictions on games, Jackson proposed banning them outright,
including pinball and other coin-op games. Jackson's proposal passed 191-19 and
became "General Bylaw 48", which banned all "automatic amusement
device(s) whether coin-op or not, except for private in-home use, coin-operated
jukeboxes, pool, billiards, bowling, and athletic training devices." Violators
would be fined $200 per offense. Some were quite happy with the new law.
Resident Jim Judge later opined that "…the fewer distractions of that type,
the easier it is to transfer my ideas and values to my youngster", while
his wife Betsy noted that ''If we have these things in the town, it draws the
wrong type of people and we want to protect our town'[4].

After
the meeting, the new Bylaw was submitted to the state Attorney General for
approval. Before the AG could rule on the issue, the town Building Inspector
sent violation notices to all business owner who had a coin-op game ordering
them to stop using them. Nine merchants[5]
refused and in August, the Building Inspector initiated court proceedings
against them. On September 30th, the Attorney General upheld the new
bylaw and the Chief of Police told the merchants they had three months to get
rid of their game before he had them seized. Outraged, the nine merchants hired
a lawyer and filed a civil suit in the state Superior Court on October 6
claiming that Bylaw 48 violated the state and federal constitutions. They also
applied for a restraining order preventing the removal of the games. When the
application was denied, they filed for a petition of relief with a single
justice of the Appeals Court. Meanwhile, the Superior Court dealt the merchants
another blow when ruled in favor of the town.

The single
justice, however, said that the trial court was not the proper place to address
the constitutional issues that had been raised and ordered the parties to seek
a speedy hearing in the Superior Court. To make their case, the merchants had
relied on three things. One was the 1982 case Turnpike Amusements Vs. City of
Cambridge, which said a licensing board couldn't arbitrarily make a
determination. on whether coin-op devices could be operated but had to judge each
location individually. Another was the fact that the bylaw would include items
clearly protected by first amendment (such as coin-op peep shows). The most
important, however, may have been a nine-minute videotape that the merchants’
lawyers showed featuring footage of five different video games (Ms. Pac-Man, Tron, Donkey Kong, Zaxxon,
and Kangaroo) and also showing what
went into the making of a video game. Like many of those who had supported the
bylaw, the justice had never seen a video game before and the videotape
convinced him that there was a potential First Amendment issue in the case.

Whatever
hope the justice’s decision may have granted the merchants was dashed on June
13, 1983 when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court once again ruled in
favor of Marshfield. This Superior Court judge wasn’t nearly as impressed by
the video tapes as the justice had been, denying that video games had "sufficient
communicative expressive elements" to merit protection under the First Amendment
and declaring that they were “in essence, only technologically advanced pinball
machines.” The court also rejected claims that the bylaw violated equal
protection, noting that the right to pursue one’s business had never been
considered a protected right meriting “strict scrutiny” and thus had to be judged
by the less stringent “rational basis” test. Under this standard, the court
found that the city had a legitimate interest in controlling the crowds and
noise that video games might cause during the busy summer months. While the
court agreed that a less-restrictive law (i.e. one banning games only during
the summer) might have been more efficient, they could not declare a statute
unconstitutional just because the means to achieve its purpose were “…rough,
illogical, or not the best available.”, noting further that “legislative bodies
are not required to convince the courts of the correctness of their legislative
judgments.” The one novel claim in the case, that the law was overbroad, was
also rejected. While Marshfield had lost the battle, however, there were hints
that video games would ultimately win the war. The most significant thing to
come out of the decision may have been the court’s acknowledgment that in the
future, video games might advance to the point where they contained sufficient
communicative and expressive elements to warrant First Amendment protection (Ira
Zaleznik, lawyer for the plaintiff later opined that laser disc games might
represent just such a case).

That
was in the future, however. For the present, Marshfield had lost yet again. The
ruling came as a relief to Marshfield attorney Robert Marzelli, who had warned
that a victory for the video game industry "would create the right to play
trivial arcade games as one of the cornerstone freedoms of our society. Such a
decision would not only degrade the First Amendment; it would surely start a
torrent of litigation on the question of which kinds of automatic amusement
games were protected, which were not, and the nature of the protection accorded
to each." The merchants, however, had one last chance. They appealed their
case to the Supreme Court. On July 12, 1983 the merchants got another reprieve
when Supreme Court justice William Brennan issued a temporary restraining order
prohibiting the removal of the games until the court weighed in on the issue.
It turned out to be just a tease, however. On November 28, the Supreme Court
voted 7-2 (with only Brennan and Byron “Whizzer” White in dissent) not to
review the state Supreme Court’s decision. It was the end of the line. The
merchants had lost and all the video games in Marshfield were carted off in
trucks in December. Marshfield Family Skateland was converted into a restaurant.
The Marshfield Sports Center went out of business The Marshfield saga was over.

But
it wasn’t. Over the years, as other communities eliminated restrictions on
video games, Marshfield remained steadfast. The town even achieved a kind of
notoriety as the only town on earth where video games were illegal. In April,
2011 the town made national headlines again when they once again voted to
repeal the ban. The measure was defeated 655-544. Finally, in April, 2014 Marshfield
voted 203-175 to overturn the now 32-year-old bylaw. By then, however, coin-op
video games were as rare as dodo birds (at least in the eyes of the press) and
the story generated little interest.

[1] Various sources have given different
figures for the number of games in town. The 60-70 figure appeared in a
newspaper article as well as a Play Meter
article. A later Play Meter article
gave a figure of 70 while other articles in Play
Meter and RePlay gave figures of
35, 53, and 200.